Here at Newsboost we have been granted exclusive access to Kevin’s new kitchen worktop and, in my humble opinion, especially one which knows sod all about quartz, it’s a bit of a something special.
We were also granted an exclusive interview with the man himself.
News berk: So what do you think? Kevin: I think it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Ian had to loan me some of his spare eyes so I could gaze at the glaze a little bit more. News berk: After all the time you spent getting it right, was it worth it? Kevin: Absolutely. 105 days it may have taken, I may have lost most of my hair and destroyed the neighbouring village in my frustrations but it’s over now. News berk: What do you intend to use the kitchen worktop for first? What’s top o’ the worktop to-do list top? Kevin: I’m going to lay out a chaise lounge of cheeses for the kids and some very sensual cakes for me and the wife. It’s going to be a great night. News berk: What advice would you give to any other aspiring kitchen worktop enthusiasts out there? Kevin: Don’t do it.
In this post, likely to be the first of many where I talk about things to do with my new house, because that’s what my life is like these days, we’re going on a journey of discovery to find the water meter.
The electricity meter is easy. That has a special meter hutch in the hallway, so you can see it as soon as you walk in the door.
The gas meter is also not too difficult. Look under the stairs, where the boiler lives, and there’s the gas meter, sheltering underneath it. Excellent.
The water meter? Last time I had to find one it lived on the outside of the building, mounted quite low on the wall. Must be around here somewhere. The water company tell me it’s electronic so it can be read by a water meter detecting robot passing within fifty metres or some such futuristic nonsense.
One place it definitely can’t be is underground, because I’ve checked all the manhole covers and other gratings and none of them are either watery or metery. One is a big inspection hatch for the drains. Another is a smaller inspection chamber where a drain turns a corner. Some are gratings into the drains. And the other is labelled SEW, presumably short for SEWER, and I’m damned if I’m going in there. It sounds gross. So that stuff is all drains.
Lucky for me, after making further inquiries it turns out SEW doesn’t stand for sewer, even though that is completely logical. No, SEW stands for South East Water. Underneath the SEW manhole cover is a foam block covered in mud, and under the foam block is four inches of freezing cold stagnant water, and under the four inches of freezing cold stagnant water is my electronic bluetooth enabled water meter.
There will, I expect, be more posts from me on this subject in the near future, because it has become a very large part of my life. But for now, it is probably enough to say that getting yourself a house is an enormous process that takes up a lot of your time and energy, and has far reaching consequences for the whole of your life. It is difficult and tiring.
On the other hand, though, it’s one of the best things ever, and it has made us this happy.
Normal service will resume in February. In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be trying to find something in a box that is under three other boxes at the back of a room full of boxes.
A new year needs a new you with a sick haircut and a bad ‘chude. Unfortunately as all the barbers are shut at the moment you’ll have to make do with clipping away with a pair of scissors yourself and hoping for the best.
We can, however, help you with your ‘chude. I bet you’re so tired of all this “help each other” and “be nice to your neighbours and fellow humans”. What you want to do is put your fist in the middle of everyone’s faces and then laugh about it afterwards when you’re shoving Cadbury’s chocolate fingers up their exhaust pipes. Pipes.
What you need is an Extrance.
The Extrance is a brand new thing for 2021. It’s an entrance that’s also an exit, so it’s totally confusing. How can one thing be another, you may ask yourself, that’s impossible. Well you’d be right but thankfully our boffins have managed to come up with the impossible and it’s available to pre-order right now.
Plus the ‘x’ makes it sounds modern and sexy.
It may look like a simple opening yet when you are within the presence of the Extrance the sheer power emanating from it will blow your socks clean away, right off your feet and into the streets, even if you’re wearing shoes. Find someone you dislike and make them walk through the Extrance. They will be immediately confused, unable to move because of the bewildering nature. Then, when they start to work out what’s happened, you press the button on your secret keyring and blast them from the hidden speakers in the Extrance’s frame with both barrels of Menendez-filtered Techno Jazz from our in-house band, X-Trance, right into their ear pipes. Pipes.
X-Trance between recording sessions
You’ll leave them dazed, deaf and possibly demented. The Three D’s as we have taken to calling it. Triple D to the max. The Extrance has so many possibilities from hilarious ruses at birthday parties to spamming the nincompoop at the office party. Your friends will whoop and cheer when they realise you’ve set them up with this year’s hottest item. They won’t want to miss out.
They come in a whole range of sizes and colours, from snooty green to snotty yellow and turdy brown, we’ve got the whole rainbow covered.
Pre-order now and receive a free ‘Entrance’ sign to go on your Extrance. The ‘n’ secretly peels off to reveal an ‘x’ underneath. Nobody will ever know, the fools.
What’s going on there exactly? It’s very odd, as though someone was trying to type ‘coin’ in their phone and came out with a right old mess of nonsense.
The more you look at it the less it makes sense, possibly causing fits of giggles from its nonsensical nature. In a way it’s a bit like that picture of George that got funnier the longer you stared at it; scientists are yet to understand the power of Gorg.
For those not in the know, myself included, a quoin is a masonry block at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic details to a corner.
Imagine that, your corner is looking a little out-dated, not completely on the fashions so you rustle up a sexy quoin and stick it on the outside of your house ot make the neighbours jealous. If I had a collection of quoins mine would all have feather boas and they’d dangle from the side of my block of flats, teasing those that walk past with their dogs.
I wonder how many quoins Kevin has been through in his redevelopment cycle encompassing most of the British Isles.
Bri4n is a gimmick with only one main purpose in life, to sell insurance. He was created by some person, probably in a suit or a skirt, to steal people away from their insurance providers and their price-comparison websites, and lure them into the domain of the “look at this” and “you can get a free pen with this one, Nigel”.
When I found Bri4n he was hiding in a bag of charity shop clothes, right at the bottom in the hope that nobody would find him. At first I wasn’t sure if he was aware of everything so, cradled in my arms, I took him from the bag and placed him back in the real world. The light was bright in his tiny, robotic eyes, and his gaze shifted away towards the dark corners of the room.
Within a few days his temperament was more stable or, at least, stable enough to carry on with the conversation that had been dangling from my tongue. I told Bri4n that he was a gimmick and that the days of being a fixtures on television were long gone. I even told him that he was no longer a collectable and his brothers and sisters were being sold for nothing more than the price of a toaster on Ebay. This upset him greatly, I knew it would, but I needed to tell him the truth. It would sting like a bee in a hipster jacket, trying to convince his friends that baked potatoes smothered in strawberry jelly tasted better than it sounded. It was the only way he could move past this though and onto the next part of his life. I wanted a new start for Bri4n as it is something we all deserve when staring down the barrel of a downward spiral.
His recovery was carefully monitored over the next week. Bri4n remained silent for most of it, humming to himself in his lighter moments. I don’t believe that he will ever truly get past the facts that haunt his existence. I can see a great despair in his eyes that all the robot pornography and robo “road juice” can’t wash away. He is a great companion and, as a flat mate, other than not contributing anything towards the rent, nor attempting any of the various cleaning and cooking chores, he is ideal.
If you’re passing by my way you may see him, arms aloft, pupils blazing like the astro moons of Jupiter, cursing the world, lamenting his life, asking all of the important questions at the same time like a crazy old man shouting at a cloud.
As you probably know, for the time being I am shacked up in a different flat a long way from home. There are many things about these temporary arrangements that are new and different, but probably the newest and differentest is the windowsill by the front door.
In this little block of flats, you see, there’s a windowsill next to the main door leading out to the car park, and the residents here seem to use it as a kind of informal swap shop. Unwanted items occasionally appear here, with no indication of their origin, and disappear a day or two later.
In the past week, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of items up for grabs, including a whole host of cook books, a coffee table book of photographs of chocolate, and one of those books that only really existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s that had a beige front cover and was specifically about microwaving things.
Here’s the current offer as I write this.
Four dishwasher tablets
Three potatoes in a basket
Three packs of lard, one of which is in a sandwich bag
A small Breville slow cooker
A CD compilation of traditional Christmas songs
The bad news, though, is that this week’s real bounty has already been taken. Here is what the windowsill held yesterday.
Yes, it’s hard to hear, I know, but the Ricky Martin album has already gone. I’ve missed my chance. Someone else in another flat is now Livin’ the Vida Loca, and I’m left slow-cooking my lard and potatoes in silence.
I’m so lazy. Look at me and be uninspired. Just look at me, one big ol’ slobbery mess. I haven’t looked this bad since that stage in my teens when I was gelling up my fringe; a tidal wave of greasy hair fixed in place. God, what was I thinking? It was aggressively bad. Now is worse though. Since the lockdown all I have done is indulge in everything I can get my chubby paws on. I find myself daydreaming about desserts. You know in cartoons when hungry characters start hallucinating? Last week I looked over and where Reuben should have been was a roast ham. It is time for a change.
As Kevin has confessed that he has a soft spot for the doggos, I have done a thing and signed up for a sponsored walk. In May I will be raising money for guide dogs by walking up and down my flat. Yes, it sounds insane and I reckon that by the end of it I may have finally crossed the line, gone through the looking glass. Is it worth it for the doggos? Of course it is. I plan to walk 100,000 steps to get some much needed cashola / dough ray me / fresh bread for Guide Dogs. In order to keep it realistic, I have set a target of £100.00 which would be enough to buy a kit for one guide dog trainer.
It takes 52 steps to walk from the front door to the window in the living room and back again. Based on my poor grasp of maths, I will have to do this 1,924 times in order to accumulate the aforementioned total of 100,000 steps. I have a full week in order to pin down this sucker, which means if I can manage about 275 times each day that should be enough.
If I had Kevin’s legs, which we all know are thrice the length of a normal person’s legs, I would be able to get from front door to window in a handful of leaps. I believe that would make the process a lot more tiresome so I am grateful for my small leg span and smaller step count.
Nobody is rich at the moment. The world is in chaos. I say this sat wearing an Adventure Time hat to keep the hair out of my eyes (my fringe has seriously lost the plot, it needs a chop). Am I still in my pyjamas? What day is it again? The point is that if you can, please sponsor Chesty at the link below:
